"I have to ask your pardon, sir, for this untimely visit," he said.
"I make no defence, I have no excuse, I have disgraced myself, I am
properly punished; I appear before you to appeal to you in mercy for the
most trifling aid or, God help me! I fear I may go mad."

"What on earth is wrong?" I asked.

"I have been robbed," he said. "I have no defence to offer; it was of my
own fault, I am properly punished."

"But, gracious goodness me!" I cried, "who is there to rob you in a
place like this?"

"I can form no opinion," he replied. "I have no idea. I was lying in a
ditch inanimate. This is a degrading confession, sir; I can only say in
self-defence that perhaps (in your good nature) you have made yourself
partly responsible for my shame. I am not used to these rich wines."

"In what form was your money? Perhaps it may be traced," I suggested.

"It was in English sovereigns. I changed it in New York; I got very good
exchange," he said, and then, with a momentary outbreak, "God in heaven,
how I toiled for it!" he cried.

"That doesn't sound encouraging," said I. "It may be worth while to
apply to the police, but it doesn't sound a hopeful case."

"And I have no hope in that direction," said Bellairs. "My hopes, Mr.
Dodd, are all fixed upon yourself. I could easily convince you that
a small, a very small advance, would be in the nature of an excellent
investment; but I prefer to rely on your humanity. Our acquaintance
began on an unusual footing; but you have now known me for some time,
we have been some time--I was going to say we had been almost intimate.
Under the impulse of instinctive sympathy, I have bared my heart to you,
Mr. Dodd, as I have done to few; and I believe--I trust--I may say that
I feel sure--you heard me with a kindly sentiment. This is what brings
me to your side at this most inexcusable hour. But put yourself in
my place--how could I sleep--how could I dream of sleeping, in this
blackness of remorse and despair? There was a friend at hand--so I
ventured to think of you; it was instinctive; I fled to your side,
as the drowning man clutches at a straw. These expressions are not
exaggerated, they scarcely serve to express the agitation of my mind.
And think, sir, how easily you can restore me to hope and, I may say,
to reason. A small loan, which shall be faithfully repaid. Five hundred
dollars would be ample." He watched me with burning eyes. "Four hundred
would do. I believe, Mr. Dodd, that I could manage with economy on two."

"And then you will repay me out of Carthew's pocket?" I said. "I am much
obliged. But I will tell you what I will do: I will see you on board a
steamer, pay your fare through to San Francisco, and place fifty dollars
in the purser's hands, to be given you in New York."

He drank in my words; his face represented an ecstasy of cunning
thought. I could read there, plain as print, that he but thought to
overreach me.

"And what am I to do in 'Frisco?" he asked. "I am disbarred, I have no
trade, I cannot dig, to beg----" he paused in the citation. "And you
know that I am not alone," he added, "others depend upon me."

"I will write to Pinkerton," I returned. "I feel sure he can help you
to some employment, and in the meantime, and for three months after
your arrival, he shall pay to yourself personally, on the first and the
fifteenth, twenty-five dollars."

"Mr. Dodd, I scarce believe you can be serious in this offer," he
replied. "Have you forgotten the circumstances of the case? Do you
know these people are the magnates of the section? They were spoken of
to-night in the saloon; their wealth must amount to many millions of
dollars in real estate alone; their house is one of the sights of the
locality, and you offer me a bribe of a few hundred!"

"I offer you no bribe, Mr. Bellairs, I give you alms," I returned. "I
will do nothing to forward you in your hateful business; yet I would not
willingly have you starve."

"Give me a hundred dollars then, and be done with it," he cried.

"I will do what I have said, and neither more nor less," said I.

"Take care," he cried. "You are playing a fool's game; you are making an
enemy for nothing; you will gain nothing by this, I warn you of it!" And
then with one of his changes, "Seventy dollars--only seventy--in mercy,
Mr. Dodd, in common charity. Don't dash the bowl from my lips! You have
a kindly heart. Think of my position, remember my unhappy wife."

"You should have thought of her before," said I. "I have made my offer,
and I wish to sleep."

"Is that your last word, sir? Pray consider; pray weigh both sides:
my misery, your own danger. I warn you--I beseech you; measure it well
before you answer," so he half pleaded, half threatened me, with clasped
hands.

"My first word, and my last," said I.

The change upon the man was shocking. In the storm of anger that now
shook him, the lees of his intoxication rose again to the surface; his
face was deformed, his words insane with fury; his pantomime excessive
in itself, was distorted by an access of St. Vitus.

"You will perhaps allow me to inform you of my cold opinion," he began,
apparently self-possessed, truly bursting with rage: "when I am a
glorified saint, I shall see you howling for a drop of water and exult
to see you. That your last word! Take it in your face, you spy, you
false friend, you fat hypocrite! I defy, I defy and despise and spit
upon you! I'm on the trail, his trail or yours, I smell blood, I'll
follow it on my hands and knees, I'll starve to follow it! I'll hunt you
down, hunt you, hunt you down! If I were strong, I'd tear your vitals
out, here in this room--tear them out--I'd tear them out! Damn, damn,
damn! You think me weak! I can bite, bite to the blood, bite you, hurt
you, disgrace you ..."

He was thus incoherently raging, when the scene was interrupted by
the arrival of the landlord and inn servants in various degrees of
deshabille, and to them I gave my temporary lunatic in charge.

"Take him to his room," I said, "he's only drunk."

These were my words; but I knew better. After all my study of Mr.
Bellairs, one discovery had been reserved for the last moment: that of
his latent and essential madness.




CHAPTER XX. STALLBRIDGE-LE-CARTHEW.


Long before I was awake, the shyster had disappeared, leaving his bill
unpaid. I did not need to inquire where he was gone, I knew too well,
I knew there was nothing left me but to follow; and about ten in the
morning, set forth in a gig for Stallbridge-le-Carthew.

The road, for the first quarter of the way, deserts the valley of the
river, and crosses the summit of a chalk-down, grazed over by flocks of
sheep and haunted by innumerable larks. It was a pleasant but a vacant
scene, arousing but not holding the attention; and my mind returned to
the violent passage of the night before. My thought of the man I was
pursuing had been greatly changed. I conceived of him, somewhere in
front of me, upon his dangerous errand, not to be turned aside, not
to be stopped, by either fear or reason. I had called him a ferret;
I conceived him now as a mad dog. Methought he would run, not walk;
methought, as he ran, that he would bark and froth at the lips;
methought, if the great wall of China were to rise across his path, he
would attack it with his nails.

Presently the road left the down, returned by a precipitous descent into
the valley of the Stall, and ran thenceforward among enclosed fields and
under the continuous shade of trees. I was told we had now entered on
the Carthew property. By and by, a battlemented wall appeared on the
left hand, and a little after I had my first glimpse of the mansion. It
stood in a hollow of a bosky park, crowded to a degree that surprised
and even displeased me, with huge timber and dense shrubberies of
laurel and rhododendron. Even from this low station and the thronging
neighbourhood of the trees, the pile rose conspicuous like a cathedral.
Behind, as we continued to skirt the park wall, I began to make out a
straggling town of offices which became conjoined to the rear with those
of the home farm. On the left was an ornamental water sailed in by many
swans. On the right extended a flower garden, laid in the old manner,
and at this season of the year, as brilliant as stained glass. The front
of the house presented a facade of more than sixty windows, surmounted
by a formal pediment and raised upon a terrace. A wide avenue, part in
gravel, part in turf, and bordered by triple alleys, ran to the great
double gateways. It was impossible to look without surprise on a place
that had been prepared through so many generations, had cost so many
tons of minted gold, and was maintained in order by so great a company
of emulous servants. And yet of these there was no sign but the
perfection of their work. The whole domain was drawn to the line and
weeded like the front plot of some suburban amateur; and I looked in
vain for any belated gardener, and listened in vain for any sounds of
labour. Some lowing of cattle and much calling of birds alone disturbed
the stillness, and even the little hamlet, which clustered at the gates,
appeared to hold its breath in awe of its great neighbour, like a troop
of children who should have strayed into a king's anteroom.

The Carthew Arms, the small but very comfortable inn, was a mere
appendage and outpost of the family whose name it bore. Engraved
portraits of by-gone Carthews adorned the walls; Fielding Carthew,
Recorder of the city of London; Major-General John Carthew in uniform,
commanding some military operations; the Right Honourable Bailley
Carthew, Member of Parliament for Stallbridge, standing by a table and
brandishing a document; Singleton Carthew, Esquire, represented in the
foreground of a herd of cattle--doubtless at the desire of his tenantry,
who had made him a compliment of this work of art; and the Venerable
Archdeacon Carthew, D.D., LL.D., A.M., laying his hand on the head of
a little child in a manner highly frigid and ridiculous. So far as
my memory serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive
hostelry; and I was not surprised to learn that the landlord was an
ex-butler, the landlady an ex-lady's-maid, from the great house; and
that the bar-parlour was a sort of perquisite of former servants.

To an American, the sense of the domination of this family over so
considerable a tract of earth was even oppressive; and as I considered
their simple annals, gathered from the legends of the engravings,
surprise began to mingle with my disgust. "Mr. Recorder" doubtless
occupies an honourable post; but I thought that, in the course of so
many generations, one Carthew might have clambered higher. The soldier
had stuck at Major-General; the churchman bloomed unremarked in an
archidiaconate; and though the Right Honourable Bailley seemed to have
sneaked into the privy council, I have still to learn what he did when
he had got there. Such vast means, so long a start, and such a modest
standard of achievement, struck in me a strong sense of the dulness of
that race.

I found that to come to the hamlet and not visit the Hall, would be
regarded as a slight. To feed the swans, to see the peacocks and
the Raphaels--for these commonplace people actually possessed two
Raphaels--to risk life and limb among a famous breed of cattle called
the Carthew Chillinghams, and to do homage to the sire (still living) of
Donibristle, a renowned winner of the oaks: these, it seemed, were
the inevitable stations of the pilgrimage. I was not so foolish as to
resist, for I might have need before I was done of general good-will;
and two pieces of news fell in which changed my resignation to
alacrity. It appeared in the first place, that Mr. Norris was from home
"travelling "; in the second, that a visitor had been before me and
already made the tour of the Carthew curiosities. I thought I knew who
this must be; I was anxious to learn what he had done and seen; and
fortune so far favoured me that the under-gardener singled out to be my
guide had already performed the same function for my predecessor.

"Yes, sir," he said, "an American gentleman right enough. At least, I
don't think he was quite a gentleman, but a very civil person."

The person, it seems, had been civil enough to be delighted with the
Carthew Chillinghams, to perform the whole pilgrimage with rising
admiration, and to have almost prostrated himself before the shrine of
Donibristle's sire.

"He told me, sir," continued the gratified under-gardener, "that he had
often read of the 'stately 'omes of England,' but ours was the first he
had the chance to see. When he came to the 'ead of the long alley, he
fetched his breath. 'This is indeed a lordly domain!' he cries. And
it was natural he should be interested in the place, for it seems
Mr. Carthew had been kind to him in the States. In fact, he seemed a
grateful kind of person, and wonderful taken up with flowers."

I heard this story with amazement. The phrases quoted told their own
tale; they were plainly from the shyster's mint. A few hours back I
had seen him a mere bedlamite and fit for a strait-waistcoat; he was
penniless in a strange country; it was highly probable he had gone
without breakfast; the absence of Norris must have been a crushing blow;
the man (by all reason) should have been despairing. And now I heard of
him, clothed and in his right mind, deliberate, insinuating, admiring
vistas, smelling flowers, and talking like a book. The strength of
character implied amazed and daunted me.

"This is curious," I said to the under-gardener. "I have had the
pleasure of some acquaintance with Mr. Carthew myself; and I believe
none of our western friends ever were in England. Who can this person
be? He couldn't--no, that's impossible, he could never have had the
impudence. His name was not Bellairs?"

"I didn't 'ear the name, sir. Do you know anything against him?" cried
my guide.

"Well," said I, "he is certainly not the person Carthew would like to
have here in his absence."

"Good gracious me!" exclaimed the gardener. "He was so pleasant spoken,
too; I thought he was some form of a schoolmaster. Perhaps, sir, you
wouldn't mind going right up to Mr. Denman? I recommended him to Mr.
Denman, when he had done the grounds. Mr. Denman is our butler, sir," he
added.

The proposal was welcome, particularly as affording me a graceful
retreat from the neighbourhood of the Carthew Chillinghams; and, giving
up our projected circuit, we took a short cut through the shrubbery and
across the bowling green to the back quarters of the Hall.

The bowling green was surrounded by a great hedge of yew, and entered
by an archway in the quick. As we were issuing from this passage, my
conductor arrested me.

"The Honourable Lady Ann Carthew," he said, in an august whisper. And
looking over his shoulder, I was aware of an old lady with a stick,
hobbling somewhat briskly along the garden path. She must have been
extremely handsome in her youth; and even the limp with which she walked
could not deprive her of an unusual and almost menacing dignity of
bearing. Melancholy was impressed besides on every feature, and
her eyes, as she looked straight before her, seemed to contemplate
misfortune.

"She seems sad," said I, when she had hobbled past and we had resumed
our walk.

"She enjoy rather poor spirits, sir," responded the under-gardener.
"Mr. Carthew--the old gentleman, I mean--died less than a year ago; Lord
Tillibody, her ladyship's brother, two months after; and then there was
the sad business about the young gentleman. Killed in the 'unting-field,
sir; and her ladyship's favourite. The present Mr. Norris has never been
so equally."

"So I have understood," said I, persistently, and (I think) gracefully
pursuing my inquiries and fortifying my position as a family friend.
"Dear, dear, how sad! And has this change--poor Carthew's return, and
all--has this not mended matters?"

"Well, no, sir, not a sign of it," was the reply. "Worse, we think, than
ever."

"Dear, dear!" said I again.

"When Mr. Norris arrived, she DID seem glad to see him," he pursued;
"and we were all pleased, I'm sure; for no one knows the young gentleman
but what likes him. Ah, sir, it didn't last long! That very night
they had a talk, and fell out or something; her ladyship took on most
painful; it was like old days, but worse. And the next morning Mr.
Norris was off again upon his travels. 'Denman,' he said to Mr. Denman,
'Denman, I'll never come back,' he said, and shook him by the 'and. I
wouldn't be saying all this to a stranger, sir," added my informant,
overcome with a sudden fear lest he had gone too far.

He had indeed told me much, and much that was unsuspected by himself.
On that stormy night of his return, Carthew had told his story; the old
lady had more upon her mind than mere bereavements; and among the mental
pictures on which she looked, as she walked staring down the path, was
one of Midway Island and the Flying Scud.

Mr. Denman heard my inquiries with discomposure, but informed me the
shyster was already gone.

"Gone?" cried I. "Then what can he have come for? One thing I can tell
you, it was not to see the house."

"I don't see it could have been anything else," replied the butler.

"You may depend upon it it was," said I. "And whatever it was, he has
got it. By the way, where is Mr. Carthew at present? I was sorry to find
he was from home."

"He is engaged in travelling, sir," replied the butler, dryly.

"Ah, bravo!" cried I. "I laid a trap for you there, Mr. Denman. Now I
need not ask you; I am sure you did not tell this prying stranger."

"To be sure not, sir," said the butler.

I went through the form of "shaking him by the 'and"--like Mr.
Norris--not, however, with genuine enthusiasm. For I had failed
ingloriously to get the address for myself; and I felt a sure conviction
that Bellairs had done better, or he had still been here and still
cultivating Mr. Denman.

I had escaped the grounds and the cattle; I could not escape the
house. A lady with silver hair, a slender silver voice, and a stream of
insignificant information not to be diverted, led me through the picture
gallery, the music-room, the great dining-room, the long drawing-room,
the Indian room, the theatre, and every corner (as I thought) of that
interminable mansion. There was but one place reserved; the garden-room,
whither Lady Ann had now retired. I paused a moment on the outside of
the door, and smiled to myself. The situation was indeed strange, and
these thin boards divided the secret of the Flying Scud.

All the while, as I went to and fro, I was considering the visit and
departure of Bellairs. That he had got the address, I was quite certain:
that he had not got it by direct questioning, I was convinced; some
ingenuity, some lucky accident, had served him. A similar chance, an
equal ingenuity, was required; or I was left helpless, the ferret must
run down his prey, the great oaks fall, the Raphaels be scattered, the
house let to some stockbroker suddenly made rich, and the name which now
filled the mouths of five or six parishes dwindle to a memory. Strange
that such great matters, so old a mansion, a family so ancient and so
dull, should come to depend for perpetuity upon the intelligence, the
discretion, and the cunning of a Latin-Quarter student! What Bellairs
had done, I must do likewise. Chance or ingenuity, ingenuity or
chance--so I continued to ring the changes as I walked down the
avenue, casting back occasional glances at the red brick facade and the
twinkling windows of the house. How was I to command chance? where was I
to find the ingenuity?

These reflections brought me to the door of the inn. And here, pursuant
to my policy of keeping well with all men, I immediately smoothed my
brow, and accepted (being the only guest in the house) an invitation to
dine with the family in the bar-parlour. I sat down accordingly with Mr.
Higgs the ex-butler, Mrs. Higgs the ex-lady's-maid, and Miss Agnes Higgs
their frowsy-headed little girl, the least promising and (as the event
showed) the most useful of the lot. The talk ran endlessly on the great
house and the great family; the roast beef, the Yorkshire pudding, the
jam-roll, and the cheddar cheese came and went, and still the stream
flowed on; near four generations of Carthews were touched upon without
eliciting one point of interest; and we had killed Mr. Henry in "the
'unting-field," with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance, and
buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county, before I could so
much as manage to bring upon the stage my intimate friend, Mr. Norris.
At the name, the ex-butler grew diplomatic, and the ex-lady's-maid
tender. He was the only person of the whole featureless series
who seemed to have accomplished anything worth mention; and his
achievements, poor dog, seemed to have been confined to going to the
devil and leaving some regrets. He had been the image of the Right
Honourable Bailley, one of the lights of that dim house, and a career
of distinction had been predicted of him in consequence almost from the
cradle. But before he was out of long clothes, the cloven foot began to
show; he proved to be no Carthew, developed a taste for low pleasures
and bad company, went birdnesting with a stable-boy before he was
eleven, and when he was near twenty, and might have been expected to
display at least some rudiments of the family gravity, rambled the
country over with a knapsack, making sketches and keeping company in
wayside inns. He had no pride about him, I was told; he would sit down
with any man; and it was somewhat woundingly implied that I was indebted
to this peculiarity for my own acquaintance with the hero. Unhappily,
Mr. Norris was not only eccentric, he was fast. His debts were still
remembered at the University; still more, it appeared, the highly
humorous circumstances attending his expulsion. "He was always fond of
his jest," commented Mrs. Higgs.

"That he were!" observed her lord.

But it was after he went into the diplomatic service that the real
trouble began.

"It seems, sir, that he went the pace extraordinary," said the
ex-butler, with a solemn gusto.

"His debts were somethink awful," said the lady's-maid. "And as nice a
young gentleman all the time as you would wish to see!"

"When word came to Mr. Carthew's ears, the turn up was 'orrible,"
continued Mr. Higgs. "I remember it as if it was yesterday. The bell was
rung after her la'ship was gone, which I answered it myself, supposing
it were the coffee. There was Mr. Carthew on his feet. ''Iggs,' he
says, pointing with his stick, for he had a turn of the gout, 'order the
dog-cart instantly for this son of mine which has disgraced hisself.'
Mr. Norris say nothink: he sit there with his 'ead down, making belief
to be looking at a walnut. You might have bowled me over with a straw,"
said Mr. Higgs.

"Had he done anything very bad?" I asked.

"Not he, Mr. Dodsley!" cried the lady--it was so she had conceived my
name. "He never did anythink to all really wrong in his poor life. The
'ole affair was a disgrace. It was all rank favouritising."

"Mrs. 'Iggs! Mrs. 'Iggs!" cried the butler warningly.

"Well, what do I care?" retorted the lady, shaking her ringlets. "You
know it was yourself, Mr. 'Iggs, and so did every member of the staff."

While I was getting these facts and opinions, I by no means neglected
the child. She was not attractive; but fortunately she had reached the
corrupt age of seven, when half a crown appears about as large as a
saucer and is fully as rare as the dodo. For a shilling down, sixpence
in her money-box, and an American gold dollar which I happened to find
in my pocket, I bought the creature soul and body. She declared her
intention to accompany me to the ends of the earth; and had to be
chidden by her sire for drawing comparisons between myself and her uncle
William, highly damaging to the latter.

Dinner was scarce done, the cloth was not yet removed, when Miss Agnes
must needs climb into my lap with her stamp album, a relic of the
generosity of Uncle William. There are few things I despise more than
old stamps, unless perhaps it be crests; for cattle (from the Carthew
Chillinghams down to the old gate-keeper's milk-cow in the lane)
contempt is far from being my first sentiment. But it seemed I was
doomed to pass that day in viewing curiosities, and smothering a yawn,
I devoted myself once more to tread the well-known round. I fancy Uncle
William must have begun the collection himself and tired of it, for
the book (to my surprise) was quite respectably filled. There were the
varying shades of the English penny, Russians with the coloured heart,
old undecipherable Thurn-und-Taxis, obsolete triangular Cape of Good
Hopes, Swan Rivers with the Swan, and Guianas with the sailing ship.
Upon all these I looked with the eyes of a fish and the spirit of a
sheep; I think indeed I was at times asleep; and it was probably in one
of these moments that I capsized the album, and there fell from the end
of it, upon the floor, a considerable number of what I believe to be
called "exchanges."

Here, against all probability, my chance had come to me; for as I
gallantly picked them up, I was struck with the disproportionate amount
of five-sous French stamps. Some one, I reasoned, must write very
regularly from France to the neighbourhood of Stallbridge-le-Carthew.
Could it be Norris? On one stamp I made out an initial C; upon a second
I got as far as CH; beyond which point, the postmark used was in every
instance undecipherable. CH, when you consider that about a quarter of
the towns in France begin with "chateau," was an insufficient clue; and
I promptly annexed the plainest of the collection in order to consult
the post-office.

The wretched infant took me in the fact. "Naughty man, to 'teal my
'tamp!" she cried; and when I would have brazened it off with a denial,
recovered and displayed the stolen article.

My position was now highly false; and I believe it was in mere pity
that Mrs. Higgs came to my rescue with a welcome proposition. If the
gentleman was really interested in stamps, she said, probably supposing
me a monomaniac on the point, he should see Mr. Denman's album. Mr.
Denman had been collecting forty years, and his collection was said
to be worth a mint of money. "Agnes," she went on, "if you were a kind
little girl, you would run over to the 'All, tell Mr. Denman there's
a connaisseer in the 'ouse, and ask him if one of the young gentlemen
might bring the album down."

"I should like to see his exchanges too," I cried, rising to the
occasion. "I may have some of mine in my pocket-book and we might
trade."

Half an hour later Mr. Denman arrived himself with a most unconscionable
volume under his arm. "Ah, sir," he cried, "when I 'eard you was a
collector, I dropped all. It's a saying of mine, Mr. Dodsley, that
collecting stamps makes all collectors kin. It's a bond, sir; it creates
a bond."

Upon the truth of this, I cannot say; but there is no doubt that
the attempt to pass yourself off for a collector falsely creates a
precarious situation.

"Ah, here's the second issue!" I would say, after consulting the legend
at the side. "The pink--no, I mean the mauve--yes, that's the beauty of
this lot. Though of course, as you say," I would hasten to add, "this
yellow on the thin paper is more rare."

Indeed I must certainly have been detected, had I not plied Mr. Denman
in self-defence with his favourite liquor--a port so excellent that it
could never have ripened in the cellar of the Carthew Arms, but must
have been transported, under cloud of night, from the neighbouring
vaults of the great house. At each threat of exposure, and in particular
whenever I was directly challenged for an opinion, I made haste to fill
the butler's glass, and by the time we had got to the exchanges, he was
in a condition in which no stamp collector need be seriously feared.
God forbid I should hint that he was drunk; he seemed incapable of the
necessary liveliness; but the man's eyes were set, and so long as he was
suffered to talk without interruption, he seemed careless of my heeding
him.

In Mr. Denman's exchanges, as in those of little Agnes, the same
peculiarity was to be remarked, an undue preponderance of that
despicably common stamp, the French twenty-five centimes. And here
joining them in stealthy review, I found the C and the CH; then
something of an A just following; and then a terminal Y. Here was also
the whole name spelt out to me; it seemed familiar, too; and yet for
some time I could not bridge the imperfection. Then I came upon another
stamp, in which an L was legible before the Y, and in a moment the word
leaped up complete. Chailly, that was the name; Chailly-en-Biere, the
post town of Barbizon--ah, there was the very place for any man to hide
himself--there was the very place for Mr. Norris, who had rambled over
England making sketches--the very place for Goddedaal, who had left a
palette-knife on board the Flying Scud. Singular, indeed, that while I
was drifting over England with the shyster, the man we were in quest of
awaited me at my own ultimate destination.

Whether Mr. Denman had shown his album to Bellairs, whether, indeed,
Bellairs could have caught (as I did) this hint from an obliterated
postmark, I shall never know, and it mattered not. We were equal now;
my task at Stallbridge-le-Carthew was accomplished; my interest in
postage-stamps died shamelessly away; the astonished Denman was bowed
out; and ordering the horse to be put in, I plunged into the study of
the time-table.




CHAPTER XXI. FACE TO FACE.


I fell from the skies on Barbizon about two o'clock of a September
afternoon. It is the dead hour of the day; all the workers have gone
painting, all the idlers strolling, in the forest or the plain; the
winding causewayed street is solitary, and the inn deserted. I was the
more pleased to find one of my old companions in the dining-room; his
town clothes marked him for a man in the act of departure; and indeed
his portmanteau lay beside him on the floor.

"Why, Stennis," I cried, "you're the last man I expected to find here."

"You won't find me here long," he replied. "King Pandion he is dead; all
his friends are lapped in lead. For men of our antiquity, the poor old
shop is played out."

"I have had playmates, I have had companions," I quoted in return.
We were both moved, I think, to meet again in this scene of our old
pleasure parties so unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both
already so much altered.

"That is the sentiment," he replied. "All, all are gone, the old
familiar faces. I have been here a week, and the only living creature
who seemed to recollect me was the Pharaon. Bar the Sirons, of course,
and the perennial Bodmer."

"Is there no survivor?" I inquired.

"Of our geological epoch? not one," he replied. "This is the city of
Petra in Edom."

"And what sort of Bedouins encamp among the ruins?" I asked.

"Youth, Dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth," he returned. "Such a
gang, such reptiles! to think we were like that! I wonder Siron didn't
sweep us from his premises."

"Perhaps we weren't so bad," I suggested.

"Don't let me depress you," said he. "We were both Anglo-Saxons, anyway,
and the only redeeming feature to-day is another."

The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived
in my mind. "Who is he?" I cried. "Tell me about him."

"What, the Redeeming Feature?" said he. "Well, he's a very pleasing
creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing. He is
very British, though, the artless Briton! Perhaps you'll find him too
much so for the transatlantic nerves. Come to think of it, on the other
hand, you ought to get on famously. He is an admirer of your great
republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and
sedulously reads a lot of American papers. I warned you he was artless."

"What papers are they?" cried I.

"San Francisco papers," said he. "He gets a bale of them about twice
a week, and studies them like the Bible. That's one of his weaknesses;
another is to be incalculably rich. He has taken Masson's old
studio--you remember?--at the corner of the road; he has furnished it
regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with vins fins and
works of art. When the youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des
Brigands to make punch--they do all that we did, like some nauseous form
of ape (I never appreciated before what a creature of tradition mankind
is)--this Madden follows with a basket of champagne. I told him he was
wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the
style of the thing, and I suppose they do. He is a very good-natured
soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless. O, and he has a
third weakness which I came near forgetting. He paints. He has never
been taught, and he's past thirty, and he paints."

"How?" I asked.

"Rather well, I think," was the reply. "That's the annoying part of it.
See for yourself. That panel is his."

I stepped toward the window. It was the old familiar room, with the
tables set like a Greek P, and the sideboard, and the aphasiac piano,
and the panels on the wall. There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from
the river, Enfield's ships among the ice, and the huge huntsman winding
a huge horn; mingled with them a few new ones, the thin crop of a
succeeding generation, not better and not worse. It was to one of these
I was directed; a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly with the
palette-knife, the colour in some parts excellent, the canvas in others
loaded with mere clay. But it was the scene, and not the art or want
of it, that riveted my notice. The foreground was of sand and scrub and
wreckwood; in the middle distance the many-hued and smooth expanse of a
lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean.
The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break. For the place
was Midway Island; the point of view the very spot at which I had landed
with the captain for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked
the day before we sailed. I had already been gazing for some seconds,
before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line; and stooping
to look, I recognised the smoke of a steamer.

"Yes," said I, turning toward Stennis, "it has merit. What is it?"

"A fancy piece," he returned. "That's what pleased me. So few of the
fellows in our time had the imagination of a garden snail."

"Madden, you say his name is?" I pursued.

"Madden," he repeated.

"Has he travelled much?" I inquired.

"I haven't an idea. He is one of the least autobiographical of men. He
sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests;
but his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to
looking like a gentleman and being one. No," added Stennis, "he'll never
suit you, Dodd; you like more head on your liquor. You'll find him as
dull as ditch water."

"Has he big blonde side-whiskers like tusks?" I asked, mindful of the
photograph of Goddedaal.

"Certainly not: why should he?" was the reply.

"Does he write many letters?" I continued.

"God knows," said Stennis. "What is wrong with you? I never saw you
taken this way before."


"The fact is, I think I know the man," said I. "I think I'm looking for
him. I rather think he is my long-lost brother."

"Not twins, anyway," returned Stennis.

And about the same time, a carriage driving up to the inn, he took his
departure.

I walked till dinner-time in the plain, keeping to the fields; for I
instinctively shunned observation, and was racked by many incongruous
and impatient feelings. Here was a man whose voice I had once heard,
whose doings had filled so many days of my life with interest and
distress, whom I had lain awake to dream of like a lover; and now his
hand was on the door; now we were to meet; now I was to learn at last
the mystery of the substituted crew. The sun went down over the plain of
the Angelus, and as the hour approached, my courage lessened. I let the
laggard peasants pass me on the homeward way. The lamps were lit, the
soup was served, the company were all at table, and the room sounded
already with multitudinous talk before I entered. I took my place and
found I was opposite to Madden. Over six feet high and well set up, the
hair dark and streaked with silver, the eyes dark and kindly, the mouth
very good-natured, the teeth admirable; linen and hands exquisite;
English clothes, an English voice, an English bearing: the man stood
out conspicuous from the company. Yet he had made himself at home, and
seemed to enjoy a certain quiet popularity among the noisy boys of the
table d'hote. He had an odd, silver giggle of a laugh, that sounded
nervous even when he was really amused, and accorded ill with his big
stature and manly, melancholy face. This laugh fell in continually all
through dinner like the note of the triangle in a piece of modern French
music; and he had at times a kind of pleasantry, rather of manner than
of words, with which he started or maintained the merriment. He took his
share in these diversions, not so much like a man in high spirits,
but like one of an approved good nature, habitually self-forgetful,
accustomed to please and to follow others. I have remarked in old
soldiers much the same smiling sadness and sociable self-effacement.

I feared to look at him, lest my glances should betray my deep
excitement, and chance served me so well that the soup was scarce
removed before we were naturally introduced. My first sip of Chateau
Siron, a vintage from which I had been long estranged, startled me into
speech.


"O, this'll never do!" I cried, in English.

"Dreadful stuff, isn't it?" said Madden, in the same language. "Do let
me ask you to share my bottle. They call it Chambertin, which it isn't;
but it's fairly palatable, and there's nothing in this house that a man
can drink at all."

I accepted; anything would do that paved the way to better knowledge.

"Your name is Madden, I think," said I. "My old friend Stennis told me
about you when I came."

"Yes, I am sorry he went; I feel such a Grandfather William, alone among
all these lads," he replied.

"My name is Dodd," I resumed.

"Yes," said he, "so Madame Siron told me."

"Dodd, of San Francisco," I continued. "Late of Pinkerton and Dodd."

"Montana Block, I think?" said he.

"The same," said I.

Neither of us looked at each other; but I could see his hand
deliberately making bread pills.

"That's a nice thing of yours," I pursued, "that panel. The foreground
is a little clayey, perhaps, but the lagoon is excellent."

"You ought to know," said he.

"Yes," returned I, "I'm rather a good judge of--that panel."

There was a considerable pause.

"You know a man by the name of Bellairs, don't you?" he resumed.

"Ah!" cried I, "you have heard from Doctor Urquart?"

"This very morning," he replied.

"Well, there is no hurry about Bellairs," said I. "It's rather a long
story and rather a silly one. But I think we have a good deal to tell
each other, and perhaps we had better wait till we are more alone."

"I think so," said he. "Not that any of these fellows know English, but
we'll be more comfortable over at my place. Your health, Dodd."

And we took wine together across the table.

Thus had this singular introduction passed unperceived in the midst of
more than thirty persons, art students, ladies in dressing-gowns and
covered with rice powder, six foot of Siron whisking dishes over our
head, and his noisy sons clattering in and out with fresh relays.

"One question more," said I: "Did you recognise my voice?"

"Your voice?" he repeated. "How should I? I had never heard it--we have
never met."

"And yet, we have been in conversation before now," said I, "and I asked
you a question which you never answered, and which I have since had many
thousand better reasons for putting to myself."

He turned suddenly white. "Good God!" he cried, "are you the man in the
telephone?"

I nodded.

"Well, well!" said he. "It would take a good deal of magnanimity to
forgive you that. What nights I have passed! That little whisper has
whistled in my ear ever since, like the wind in a keyhole. Who could it
be? What could it mean? I suppose I have had more real, solid misery
out of that ..." He paused, and looked troubled. "Though I had more to
bother me, or ought to have," he added, and slowly emptied his glass.

"It seems we were born to drive each other crazy with conundrums," said
I. "I have often thought my head would split."

Carthew burst into his foolish laugh. "And yet neither you nor I had the
worst of the puzzle," he cried. "There were others deeper in."

"And who were they?" I asked.

"The underwriters," said he.

"Why, to be sure!" cried I, "I never thought of that. What could they
make of it?"

"Nothing," replied Carthew. "It couldn't be explained. They were a crowd
of small dealers at Lloyd's who took it up in syndicate; one of them has
a carriage now; and people say he is a deuce of a deep fellow, and has
the makings of a great financier. Another furnished a small villa on
the profits. But they're all hopelessly muddled; and when they meet each
other, they don't know where to look, like the Augurs."

Dinner was no sooner at an end than he carried me across the road
to Masson's old studio. It was strangely changed. On the walls were
tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures--a Rousseau, a
Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, and a piece which my host
claimed (and I believe) to be a Titian. The room was furnished with
comfortable English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, and
an elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of
Schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler's tray, and in one corner,
behind a half-drawn curtain, I spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub.
Such a room in Barbizon astonished the beholder, like the glories of the
cave of Monte Cristo.

"Now," said he, "we are quiet. Sit down, if you don't mind, and tell me
your story all through."

I did as he asked, beginning with the day when Jim showed me the passage
in the _Daily Occidental_, and winding up with the stamp album and the
Chailly postmark. It was a long business; and Carthew made it longer,
for he was insatiable of details; and it had struck midnight on the old
eight-day clock in the corner, before I had made an end.

"And now," said he, "turn about: I must tell you my side, much as I hate
it. Mine is a beastly story. You'll wonder how I can sleep. I've told it
once before, Mr. Dodd."

"To Lady Ann?" I asked.

"As you suppose," he answered; "and to say the truth, I had sworn never
to tell it again. Only, you seem somehow entitled to the thing; you have
paid dear enough, God knows; and God knows I hope you may like it, now
you've got it!"

With that he began his yarn. A new day had dawned, the cocks crew in the
village and the early woodmen were afoot, when he concluded.




CHAPTER XXII. THE REMITTANCE MAN.


Singleton Carthew, the father of Norris, was heavily built and feebly
vitalised, sensitive as a musician, dull as a sheep, and conscientious
as a dog. He took his position with seriousness, even with pomp; the
long rooms, the silent servants, seemed in his eyes like the observances
of some religion of which he was the mortal god. He had the stupid man's
intolerance of stupidity in others; the vain man's exquisite alarm lest
it should be detected in himself. And on both sides Norris irritated and
offended him. He thought his son a fool, and he suspected that his son
returned the compliment with interest. The history of their relation was
simple; they met seldom, they quarrelled often. To his mother, a fiery,
pungent, practical woman, already disappointed in her husband and her
elder son, Norris was only a fresh disappointment.

Yet the lad's faults were no great matter; he was diffident, placable,
passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he
watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not
tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously
grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother
labouring at the pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier
in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. They
were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not
even one thing needful. He was born disenchanted, the world's promises
awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the world's
distinctions seemed to him equally without a base in fact. He liked the
open air; he liked comradeship, it mattered not with whom, his comrades
were only a remedy for solitude. And he had a taste for painted art. An
array of fine pictures looked upon his childhood, and from these roods
of jewelled canvas he received an indelible impression. The gallery at
Stallbridge betokened generations of picture lovers; Norris was perhaps
the first of his race to hold the pencil. The taste was genuine, it
grew and strengthened with his growth; and yet he suffered it to be
suppressed with scarce a struggle. Time came for him to go to Oxford,
and he resisted faintly. He was stupid, he said; it was no good to put
him through the mill; he wished to be a painter. The words fell on his
father like a thunderbolt, and Norris made haste to give way. "It didn't
really matter, don't you know?" said he. "And it seemed an awful shame
to vex the old boy."

To Oxford he went obediently, hopelessly; and at Oxford became the
hero of a certain circle. He was active and adroit; when he was in
the humour, he excelled in many sports; and his singular melancholy
detachment gave him a place apart. He set a fashion in his clique.
Envious undergraduates sought to parody his unaffected lack of zeal
and fear; it was a kind of new Byronism more composed and dignified.
"Nothing really mattered"; among other things, this formula embraced the
dons; and though he always meant to be civil, the effect on the college
authorities was one of startling rudeness. His indifference cut like
insolence; and in some outbreak of his constitutional levity (the
complement of his melancholy) he was "sent down" in the middle of the
second year.

The event was new in the annals of the Carthews, and Singleton was
prepared to make the most of it. It had been long his practice to
prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is
an advantage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the father
is interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be
interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong, the others come
true. Old Carthew drew from this source esoteric consolations; he dwelt
at length on his own foresight; he produced variations hitherto unheard
from the old theme "I told you so," coupled his son's name with the
gallows and the hulks, and spoke of his small handful of college debts
as though he must raise money on a mortgage to discharge them.

"I don't think that is fair, sir," said Norris. "I lived at college
exactly as you told me. I am sorry I was sent down, and you have a
perfect right to blame me for that; but you have no right to pitch into
me about these debts."

The effect upon a stupid man not unjustly incensed need scarcely be
described. For a while Singleton raved.

"I'll tell you what, father," said Norris at last, "I don't think this
is going to do. I think you had better let me take to painting. It's
the only thing I take a spark of interest in. I shall never be steady as
long as I'm at anything else."

"When you stand here, sir, to the neck in disgrace," said the father, "I
should have hoped you would have had more good taste than to repeat this
levity."

The hint was taken; the levity was never more obtruded on the father's
notice, and Norris was inexorably launched upon a backward voyage. He
went abroad to study foreign languages, which he learned, at a very
expensive rate; and a fresh crop of debts fell soon to be paid, with
similar lamentations, which were in this case perfectly justified, and
to which Norris paid no regard. He had been unfairly treated over the
Oxford affair; and with a spice of malice very surprising in one so
placable, and an obstinacy remarkable in one so weak, refused from that
day forward to exercise the least captaincy on his expenses. He wasted
what he would; he allowed his servants to despoil him at their pleasure;
he sowed insolvency; and when the crop was ripe, notified his father
with exasperating calm. His own capital was put in his hands, he was
planted in the diplomatic service and told he must depend upon himself.

He did so till he was twenty-five; by which time he had spent his money,
laid in a handsome choice of debts, and acquired (like so many other
melancholic and uninterested persons) a habit of gambling. An Austrian
colonel--the same who afterwards hanged himself at Monte Carlo--gave
him a lesson which lasted two-and-twenty hours, and left him wrecked and
helpless. Old Singleton once more repurchased the honour of his name,
this time at a fancy figure; and Norris was set afloat again on stern
conditions. An allowance of three hundred pounds in the year was to be
paid to him quarterly by a lawyer in Sydney, New South Wales. He was not
to write. Should he fail on any quarter-day to be in Sydney, he was to
be held for dead, and the allowance tacitly withdrawn. Should he return
to Europe, an advertisement publicly disowning him was to appear in
every paper of repute.

It was one of his most annoying features as a son, that he was always
polite, always just, and in whatever whirlwind of domestic anger, always
calm. He expected trouble; when trouble came, he was unmoved: he might
have said with Singleton, "I told you so"; he was content with thinking,
"just as I expected." On the fall of these last thunderbolts, he bore
himself like a person only distantly interested in the event; pocketed
the money and the reproaches, obeyed orders punctually; took ship and
came to Sydney. Some men are still lads at twenty-five; and so it was
with Norris. Eighteen days after he landed, his quarter's allowance was
all gone, and with the light-hearted hopefulness of strangers in what
is called a new country, he began to besiege offices and apply for all
manner of incongruous situations. Everywhere, and last of all from his
lodgings, he was bowed out; and found himself reduced, in a very elegant
suit of summer tweeds, to herd and camp with the degraded outcasts of
the city.